Gender Madness

What happened to the exiles of the Arab Spring? Are fruits of the revolution thriving in their European haven?

All across the USA people are rising up against fracking. They don’t believe the process is safe and think it causes wide-scale land contamination. Ever more extraction sites are being approved and developed with new plant being built in once idyllic landscapes. 

Child prostitution in Kenya has reached a shocking level. Extreme poverty and sex tourism lead to the sexual exploitation of children on a massive scale. RT Doc investigates what is being done about the problem and who profits from it.

They serve a prison sentence, but they committed no crime. They are born behind barbed wire and all they can hope for is their mothers' love. But love is not a regular guest in jail. Are they atoning their mothers' sins or standing on a path to new ones?

For some people, the so-called ‘Tower of David’ is just an unfinished skyscraper. For others, it’s an asylum for robbers and murderers. About 800 families call this place home. RTD presents a film about people that live in this tower.

What do small village news look like? Slow-paced? Funny? Unsensational? Perhaps, but for the viewers of the state TV company “Metronom”, with a TV tower in Raisa Soboleva’s back garden, these broadcasts are important because life in their village gets better with each aired programme.

Egypt is a land where the concept of gender equality has barely taken root. It’s hard for women to make ends meet and even harder if they happen to be single parents. When Sisa’s husband died, leaving her alone to bring up and feed a young daughter, she came up with a novel solution; she became a man! For the next 43 years she pretended to be male.  Now in her 60s, she has no doubts about living that lie, saying it was a far better choice than taking another husband.

Don’t mess with Texas. RT travels to the Republic of Texas and meets Texans who are proud of their heritage, embrace self-reliance and are ready to live by what they preach, even if it strays from the norms of mainstream American society.

In the poverty-stricken former Soviet country of Tajikistan, the men have sought job opportunities abroad and the women are left in charge of agrarian communities where cattle provide almost everything and luxuries are few.

Olga Sorokina is mother to 8 children. She’s also the head of an international business. Learn her life rules that help her manage motherhood as well as business, whilst moving her family to a foreign country. 

Minister Steve, founder of “Tent City” for the homeless, lost his battle with the authorities and the makeshift settlement was torn down. Now he's built a raft to sail the perilous waters of the Intracoastal Waterway and raise awareness of the problem of homelessness in America. Flying a 13-star Betsy Ross flag, and with conquistador statue for protection, RTD's Aleksey Brazhnikov joins him as he embarks on his odyssey.

Amsterdam could compete with New York for the title of modern Babylon. More than 200 ethnic groups live here. The whole of post-war Netherlands has been working hard to build the image of Europe’s most tolerant country – but what has been the result?

A stranger in his homeland and a stranger in his adopted country, a former Soviet soldier had to stay in Afghanistan for 29 years after being captured by the Mujahideen and made to fight on the side of his country's enemy. In this film, he finally comes back to his native land, but is he welcomed?

Cossack troops return to France 200 years after the Napoleonic wars were over. They'll show traditional riding tricks, wield swords while on horseback and perform other spectacular stunts, but no bloodshed or wounded people this time, just fun and games. 

They’re only children, but they already have medals for bravery. They saved someone else's lives while risking their own. A burning house, a frozen river, or a bullet. There is no threat big enough for the young and the brave when others are in danger.

Escaping harsh reality or relaxing after a hard working day? A guilty pleasure or the only reason to wake up in the morning? Computer games are made for fun, but sometimes they cause one's real life turning into a slaughterous level which inevitably results in Game Over. 

At the age of 15, Oleg and Polina have to get used to the adult responsibilities of parenthood. To help them adapt to their new life, Yulia steps in, a foster mother who has brought up 7 children and now hopes to make a difference for these young people and their baby daughter. She soon learns though that old habits die hard, and working through what they learned at the orphanage is a challenge.